Miami Light Project is excited to announce our newest program, ScreenDance Miami! Awarded Best Festival in Miami New Times – “Best of Miami 2016” –ScreenDance Miami is a festival that takes place each January at various venues. It offers skill-developing workshops, panel discussions and screenings. The festival was originally produced by Tigertail and directed by Pioneer Winter. Moving into its fifth year, ScreenDance Miami will be produced by Miami Light Project with continued direction by Pioneer Winter. ScreenDance Miami highlights choreographers and directors who are working with emerging and new concepts in regard to movement and dance on film and dance on camera. The festival has been created to support professionals in this field and to support the development of dance created for the camera.

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL DIRECTOR

Pioneer Winter is a Miami-based choreographer, and director of the Pioneer Winter Collective. His Collective provides a platform for risk-taking, progressive, and experimental projects by democratizing performance through unexpected bodies, unexpected places, and unexpected social change. Through his Collective, Winter also directs/produces several programs, including Leaders of Equality through Arts and Performance (LEAP), for LGBTQ-identifying teens and their allies that focuses on using the arts for activism and social change; and the Grass Stains fellowship, a site-specific performance initiative that mentors and commissions artists interested in creating site-based and public artwork in Miami through a close collaboration with acclaimed site choreographer Stephan Koplowitz.

In 2016, he was appointed director of Tigertail Production’s ScreenDance Miami Festival and has continued as director with its transition to Miami Light Project’s programming. His own films works have been screened at festivals internationally, most recently in the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, LA Dance Film Festival, ScreenDance Miami, Miami Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, Corvallis Queer Film Festival, Tiny Dance Film Festival, Chicago Feminist Film Festival, Jacksonville Dance Film Festival, Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes y Arte sobre Enfermedades in Valencia, Spain, and American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers.

A Horatio Alger Scholar, he is an alumnus of the Florida International University Honors College, and holds a Masters in Public Health and Epidemiology. Winter completed a Master of Fine Arts in Choreography from Jacksonville University/White Oak, as the first artist to be named a Dennis R. Washington Achievement Scholar. He was a Dance Miami Choreographic Program recipient (2014-2015) and Miami Goes Elsewhere Fellowship recipient (2016), and is a fellow and faculty member in the FIU Honors College Department. He was also awarded a commission and residency for the inaugural 2017-2018 season of the MDC Live Arts Lab Alliance.